


Folk Song

by CollisionTheory



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Confessions, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, I wanted to do a GRRM like paragraph describing food but held myself back, foxiyoweek2020, it was difficult but I managed it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-15 18:06:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28568196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CollisionTheory/pseuds/CollisionTheory
Summary: Riyo comes across Fox at a cultural festival on Coruscant, taking advantage of his break time to sing him a folk song and say something she didn't know how to say.
Relationships: Riyo Chuchi/CC-1010 | Fox
Comments: 6
Kudos: 14





	Folk Song

**Author's Note:**

> For Foxiyo Week 2020!
> 
> Saturday - Secret: private, secluded, undercover

The Senatorial District was bustling as people churned about the different exhibitions, eager for another day of the Republic Arts and Cultural Festival. Banners fluttered and snapped in the evening breeze as floating holo displays twirled and danced overhead. Commander Fox moved through the crowd, tuning out bits of laughter and music as they darted past him, never noticing the smoke and steam from food vendors or olfactory exhibits as his helmet filters cycled them back out into the air. Comm talk from other units buzzed in his ear as he surveyed the guests around him, scanning them with his HUD to check for any suspicious body language or odd behavior. While technically on a short break to ostensibly grab some water and food at the mobile security center, Commander Fox was never _really_ on a break; threats didn’t disappear just because he wanted to grab a protein bar or remember what it felt like to sit down for a minute. His mind kept scanning whatever he saw around him until he finally spotted the object of interest, and today, the target was different from usual.

As this event was too important to be entrusted solely to the Security Forces, members of the Coruscant Guard had been tasked with patrolling various zones across the grounds. This was partially to diffuse trouble among guests, but mostly it was a bit of security theatre; the guardsmen any potential bad actors should actually have been concerned about were posted where they saw you and you would never see them. So while Riyo expected to see plenty of guardsmen throughout the day, she hadn’t been expecting to see their commanding officer.

Her heart jumped as she did, moving herself up off the floor cushions and carpet to exit the ray-shield-like privacy field ringing the Pantoran performance area.

“Commander Fox!” she called out as he approached. Her gold bracelets slid down her arm as she waved, imprinting cool circlets against her skin.

She moved forward to meet him, almost bumping into a group of Twi’leks who cut in front of her. She stopped short, and when they passed, Fox was already standing there, helmet inclined to look down at her.

“Are you enjoying the festival?” she said brightly before he could speak.

He wasn’t. The dual concerns of security and logistics for the month-long event had fused themselves into a single nightmare, like a lylek with two heads. But he had no interest in putting that on her, so he didn’t say anything.

“Haven’t had time to yet, Senator…” he lowered his voice, “…but a lot can change in the next five minutes.”

Riyo could practically see the conspiratorial grin plastered across his face as he made _that_ come-hither gesture with his gloved fingers, disguising the action from outside eyes as he swept his arms up to cross over his breastplate.

With Fox there in his armor, people flowed around and away from the unknowable clone soldier. Across most of Coruscant, the Guard were men (or droids in organic shells, depending on who you asked) whom you mostly only dealt with if you had either screwed up in a major way or were about to witness someone else who had. The upshot of this attitude was that it gave him and Riyo a bubble of space in the chaos. He took a step forward, shortening the gap between them to make that bubble even smaller.

“Oh, so you’re finally on break?” she asked, face and voice projecting nothing but innocence.

Damn- not the response he’d been hoping for, but she knew what she was doing; Riyo liked frustrating him in a small, delicious ways. The more judicious part of Fox’s brain then admitted to the rest of himself (mostly concentrated below his waist) that she could very well not be in the mood right now, and he was only capable of wanting what she too wanted- so, illicit mission aborted.

He nodded in reply.

“My first all day. Gunner recently got out of bacta, so I took over one of his watches and forfeited my earlier allotted break. He doesn’t know it of course- thinks he was voluntold to do something tedious involving sitting at desk doing datawork I offloaded onto him, but it’s really to prevent him from trying to prove to our medics that he can cram a two-week recovery period into three and a half days.”

Fox continued as he and Riyo walked over to the array of tents and stages set up for the Pantoran exhibition.

“Somehow he slipped through the cracks and wasn’t put on limited duty when he should’ve been, but that ends tomorrow- _before_ he can re-break himself, something difficult to get parts for, or both.”

Since getting to know Fox, Riyo had come to know that the military was a little less- well, _professional_ , than she had imagined. This reminded her of how on any given day, there was with 100% certainty a trooper out there taking great pains to prevent one of his brothers from unintentionally sabotaging his own health and safety, the condition of their equipment, or the public reputation of the GAR. The most concerning (and best) stories involved all three at risk, and Fox could feel the gauge tracking his accelerated aging tick higher each time such an event sprung up within the Corrie Guard. 

Riyo leaned against a table laden with various foods, listening to him talk. Eyes on him, she poured two glasses of a dark red liquid from a pitcher full of ice with little fruits bobbing at the top.

“…the longnecks would have to recondition him _twice_ just to beat it out of him…”

Fox eventually finished his report on the bottomless sarlacc pit of surprises that was clone trooper Gunner, granite slug debacle in the barracks included, and Riyo commiserated with him on senatorial staff that also made her work interesting in all the wrong ways. 

He watched her as she spoke. She drank from one glass she was holding, set it down, then later accidentally drunk from the other before she caught herself- hand flying over her mouth, looking apologetic as her eyes popped open in surprise. The beaded chains of her hair ornament bobbed with the motion of her head. Fox couldn’t remove his helmet here to partake anyway, (he’d written that directive himself,) but simply having the opportunity to be around her and see the little patterns and nuances in her reactions was enough for him. He was enchanted, even by her mistake.

If a major situation developed here today and anything bad happened to Riyo Chuchi, he’d personally send himself back to Kamino for reconditioning.

“You can’t have this now, I wasn’t thinking…” said Riyo offhandedly, more to herself than to him as she put down the second glass. She looked critically at the spread of food representing different regions of Pantora- roasted and stuffed vegetables in savory gravies, tender dumplings whose tops were folded to represent the marsh flowers of spring, herb-seasoned flatbreads with grilled meats from the southern mountains, small batter-coated cephalopods on skewers served with three types of sauce from her home province, a reddish stew of shellfish that still bubbled in its dish…

“Can you at least take any of this with you? You’ve been working all day…” she continued.

Fox shook his head.

“For security reasons we can’t accept food from civilians here. We don’t know who’s handled any of this, or what their intentions are. Whatever’s at the mobile security center is what we get, me included.”

Fox the CO? _Especially_ him included.

“And what do they have there?” asked Riyo.

“I’m hoping for a protein bar.” 

She snorted.

Fox really _was_ hoping for one. He was careful about his nutritional requirements, and chest day was coming up at the gym; he categorically refused to yield dominance of that muscle group in particular to any of the other commanders he was in competition with.

“Well I still want you to enjoy yourself here, maybe there’s…something else…” her words trailed off as she looked around her.

Her eyes caught a Pantoran singer seated on a cushion in the middle of a stage, a long burgundy skirt spread about her in a circle, embroidered with gold and copper flowers and diamond-shapes. The privacy shield was up so the music was blocked from Riyo’s hearing, but she could still see the woman gesture to her fellow musicians, moving one hand with the flow of the song, smiling at the audience as she titled her head…

The noise of the crowds outside rushed back into Fox’s awareness as Riyo fell into thought. A few guests cautiously approached the table from his flank, but when he turned his helmeted face to look at them, they shrank away nervously. He watched the group as they left the exhibition altogether, melding back into the sea of color and sound teeming outside like prey animals of Shili sneaking back into the tall grass in the wake of a Togrutan hunting party.

“Fox, come!”

He snapped his head back towards Riyo who now gestured for him to follow. She led them both over to a privacy-shield-partitioned area big enough for only a few people. A traditional rug was spread over the floor, its pattern blocked from view in patches by scattered cushions. Fox paused and waited for Riyo as she went over to speak to a nearby protocol droid, then followed her through the privacy shield when she returned and stepped into the room.

Riyo sat down in the center of the rug, knees bent with her legs off to the side; most other positions in _this_ skirt weren’t going to work in public. Fox took a seat on a cushion across from her, watching her as she rolled her shoulders a bit and drew back her head, wrestling with something.

The silver protocol droid shuffled in, lifting its arms slightly in greeting. 

“Excuse me miss Chuchi, the music droids you requested…” With a stiff gesture, it admitted several small droids that came rolling in through the flickering white shield.

One carried an instrument with a round body and long neck crossed by many strings. Another held two earthen drums the color of the dirt of Geonosis, and the final carried an assortment of bells and cymbals on strings. Instruments other than those of war were beyond Fox’s range of competency- he had no idea what any of them were called and didn’t care to know. Music was something that others brought into being around him and was not understood as a thing that he could call upon himself, whether that was through holostream on his datapad or through the power of his own voice.

Riyo breathed in slowly as the music droids assembled behind her on the soft carpet, beeping and whirring inquisitively before settling down into playing positions.

The last time she’d sung for an audience, she had been part of a vocal competition group while getting her law degree. She had often been nervous and shot through with adrenaline, expecting judgement over exacting, rigorous standards in front of a sea of people like the one outside the shield. She brushed her hands over her skirt, expecting a twinge of anxiety to jump up in her throat or nest in her stomach as she saw the hundreds of people milling by, some looking at her and Fox, with Fox staring right at her too.

But she looked back at him and found she truly wasn’t nervous at all. Fox was sitting before her and the impersonal crowd covered in armor that, despite his customizations, was still impersonal- yet she could see right through it. Riyo knew how his curls would reflect the light, how they’d feel in her hands. She could see the course of breath through his chest and the small movements of muscles in his arms as he moved, all as though he were wearing just the tank top beneath his blacks. Riyo could picture his face as uniquely _Fox’s_ face as though it were distinct and unshared by millions. She felt calm, anchored at her home port localized to no particular place, but to one particular person. Looking at Fox now, she knew exactly what song she was going to sing, and what changes she would make to say what she now realized she’d wanted to say for a long time. 

She turned her head back and said something to the music droids who began to play, first with the soft clay drums and then the strings before the tiny bells gently chimed in. She tuned her voice to them, then closed her eyes and started to sing.

_My village is on the banks of the river Jenjhun_

_Come find me there, oh my dark-haired captain_

_Go across the Jenjhun, oh my dark-haired captain_

It was in an obsolete dialect of Pantora that had only survived owing to its use in devotional song to the moon goddess. As she sang the old words, her mind was pulled back to lessons with her vocal teacher, an older woman with bob-cut hair and spidery clan tattoos who always demanded exactitude in pronunciation. Consonants that had since shifted into others over four hundred years, vowels in redundant grammatical particles nobody enunciated anymore- if they were part of the original composition, her teacher said that they were as important to the soul of song as the notes themselves.

Riyo had made some changes to the lyrics. Fox wouldn’t understand them so it wouldn’t ultimately matter she supposed, but she thought it might enhance the honesty of her emotion. She had maintained the archaic vocabulary and style of the old language. That was easy- she wouldn’t have been qualified as a cultural ambassador of Pantora if she couldn’t- but she felt her tongue reflexively gloss over cumbersome new words and odd consonants, focusing on the sweep and timing of the notes instead. Her old music teacher’s eyes flashed in her memory, holding a hand up, voice brusque: _No- again!_ She felt the collective presence of all the festival-goers as though their attention was focused on her in this small room, like she wasn’t in front of just Fox, but again before an audience pulling apart her team’s performance as she filled her stressful law school days with stress of another sort up on a stage.

She had to get out of her own head- it was never supposed to be like this.

_My village is on the banks of the river Jenjhun_

_Come you soldier, dressed in white and crimson_

_Go across the Jenjhun, dressed in white and crimson_

Riyo sunk deeper into the music, pushing her memories away from her intentions. She let go of her thoughts, concerns over technicalities of pronunciation evaporating as she kept singing with the current of soft strings and gentle percussion flowing behind her voice. She began to sway almost subconsciously, hands subtlety following the vocal ornamentation of notes as the lilting melody carried her mind up somewhere else. Soon Riyo felt like she wasn’t really singing at all, but was a mouthpiece for something that already existed, something bound up in the air within privacy field that separated her and Fox from the hundreds of beings beyond it. It ran through them both, and she was merely offering it her voice through which to speak. 

Now, despite the crowd, she felt like they were truly alone. She opened her eyes to look at him without realizing it and held his gaze as she continued, addressing him with her voice and motions. 

_My village is on the banks of the river Jenjhun_

_Come take my hand, a lover’s vow woven_

_Go across the Jenjhun, a lover’s vow woven_

Her song was nice at first, but then she cast something off and stepped out of her restraints, and Fox was put in a trance. It was like he’d had a few too many at the lounge he frequented with some of the other officers and was now fixated on a single goal or idea; he was stuck on Riyo Chuchi to the exclusion of all other thoughts and to the detriment of all outside sensations. The crosstalk and comm chatter in his ear, the constant rush of people and movement outside, the little droids behind her- all gone. Something like a wave rose in his chest as he was immersed in the sound of her voice, beautifully sweet with an undercurrent of strength. It passed over him like the swell of the tide, soaking him to the bone as it pulled him towards her.

He wanted to take in the entirety of her body as it moved to the song she was creating, captivated by the sway of her head and neck changing with the intensity of her voice. Sometimes her hands would rise on invisible air currents, her fingers forming small twists and gestures like she was playing with ribbons of fabric or curls of lingering smoke. Fox wanted to kiss each one of them, then kiss the strand of lilac hair that had come loose and fallen across the side of her cheek. The crease of her skirt across her legs, the shape of her hips, the focus in her face and the timbre of her voice; he couldn’t have moved had he wanted to, she was so perfect. 

Something about her expression changed when her eyes flickered open. She was looking at Fox in a way that no one else did, something underwritten by the passion and insistence in her voice and body language, something honest. He couldn’t describe what it was and hadn’t been expecting to face it up close, but he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he felt that way too. 

Riyo took a long breath and seemed to collapse a little as she finished her song, watching Fox silently as the assisting music droids rolled away off the carpet and blinked past the privacy field. She felt like she had weighed nothing and was slowly adjusting to gravity again.

The protocol droid was back now. It bent politely at the waist as it spoke to the commander.

“Will you be needing a translation, sir?”

Fox staggered to his feet and leaned sideways to hit something on the control panel to the privacy shield. The shield darkened, forming an opaque screen about their small, nearly sound-proofed room in the midst of the huge festival. He pulled off his helmet, dropping it carelessly to the floor as he crossed over to Riyo and pulled her up with both hands, his eyes never leaving hers.

“No…no, I understood everything.” He rested his forehead on hers, closing his eyes as he whispered his answer.

She meshed her hands with his and drew him into a kiss. She was soft, and they lingered there for a moment as a thought came to him.

It wouldn’t be that bad, if he were sent for reconditioning… Riyo would still be warm and kind, as driven and passionate as ever, and he’d get to experience falling in love with her again and again and again.

**Author's Note:**

> The song Riyo sings is inspired by a Hindustani classical song on YouTube. According to the description, the original may have been inspired by a folk song of Western India where the singer herself is from. The first two lines are repeated throughout the song and directly inspired what Riyo sings, mostly because those are the only two complete lines I understood without a translation (lol.) The lyrics describe the singer's yearning for their lover and all the nice things they'll do for him. It's about Radha and Krishna but I thought the sentiment would be very sweet for Foxiyo. 
> 
> Riyo's song in the story is meant to be longer than three "verses" but I wasn't going to write out the whole thing because I am not a poet. :(
> 
> The idea of Riyo as a Pantoran cultural ambassador or something is probably from stuff I read in the fandom but honestly I have no idea who thought of it, so big credit to the fandom and I'm sorry I forgot your name(s), original creator(s) of this idea! :(


End file.
